


Phish Food and Cheeto-Breath Kisses

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 09:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: It was odd to be coming home this early with the sun still flooding in behind him as he crosses the lobby, arms full of takeout bags. It was an odd artifact of the news cycle— the flurry of emails, phone calls, and texts that had started arriving in the middle of the night three days ago— and the impending weekend. It was quiet now, rush hour not quite begun, and it feels, oddly, as if the storm was still approaching, as if it hadn't just blown through them. Three days with almost no sleep, he should be exhausted, but he's not, and that's what worries him. The storm may be over but he hadn't spared a thought for the damage it may have caused.





	Phish Food and Cheeto-Breath Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> This fic spun from a conversation I was having about some of my favorite things: sitting on counters, sunsets, and great bathroom lighting.
> 
> There are a couple of mentions of wartime violence (one involving children), and drinking.

It was odd to be coming home this early with the sun still flooding in behind him as he crosses the lobby, arms full of takeout bags. It was an odd artifact of the news cycle— the flurry of emails, phone calls, and texts that had started arriving in the middle of the night three days ago— and the impending weekend. It was quiet now, rush hour not quite begun, and it feels, oddly, as if the storm was still approaching, as if it hadn't just blown through them. Three days with almost no sleep, he should be exhausted, but he's not, and that's what worries him. The storm may be over but he hadn't spared a thought for the damage it may have caused.

He's quiet in the entryway, toeing off his shoes so he can pad into the kitchen in his socks. He shoves the bags of food into the oven where they'll stay warm, while Sloan, perched on the counter, digs through the bag he had handed her.

“Cherry Garcia, Phish Food,” she sighs in appreciation, and then clasps a hand to her mouth to keep in an excited squeal, her eyes wide. “Will, did you? Did you?”

She's whispering, vibrating with delight. He smiles and shrugs, laughs, startled, when she leans over to hug him, short and fierce, a fleeting token of her gratitude.

He stands there a moment, absorbing the feeling, the warmth her touch had left. It wasn't often that he and Sloan touched, that they embraced, and while it's not as infrequent as it used to be, it still surprised him, the sudden outburst of emotion a stark contrast to Sloan’s normal restraint.

“You did.” She grins at him, prying off the lid of the Styrofoam cup.

He had. He had stopped off at her favorite ice cream shop, a little place tucked between a laundromat and an electronics store. Along with the usual, they had a small selection of flavors they made in house, in the tiny kitchen in the back, including Sloan’s favorite mint chocolate chip.

The shop wasn't exactly on his way, but if he was driving halfway across town to sneak food out of the back of a five star restaurant, he had figured a detour wouldn't go amiss.

He watches her lick the lid, shifting on the counter so she can pull the drawer below her open, fish out a spoon without banging her knees. He could have handed her one from the dishwasher but she's so intent on the task, so pleased, that he lets her be.

“This is great.” She digs in humming. “Do you want some?”

“No that's for you.” He's gentle in his refusal, brushing a hand over one of her splayed knees, knowing her offer is genuine.

“Did you?”

“Yeah, there are pastries for later. Cookies.” He amends, “from that place on the corner. To go with the wine.”

“It's in the fridge. One bottle and one bottle only. Madeira.” For a moment her smile fades slightly as she regards him seriously.

“Yeah, I'm sure.” He nods toward the living room then the back bedroom, stepping away when she nods. “Mac still asleep? I'm going to go change.”

“Me too.” Sloan snaps the lid back in place and drops to the floor as he slides open the fridge’s freezer drawer so she can toss the bag of ice creams in.

“She was out cold before you made it down to the street.” Sloan whispers as they make their way through the apartment.

He had figured as much. While Mac had complained about the lack of delivery service, and wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise about how lucky they were to be getting takeout in the first place, he had known the bluster wouldn't last long. They were all exhausted, but she more than most.

She had made sure he had gotten sleep, insisted on it. She had run through his prep, kept track of scheduling, farmed out his copywriting and fact checking. She had checked in with Sloan, ordered his food, straightened his shoes by the front door after he had fallen into bed with them on. He should have stopped her, the impulse had been there at the time, but he had been trying to hold it together, trying not to fall apart anymore than he’d needed to.

Mac hadn't blinked. She had breathed in tragedy and exhaled carefully ordered facts. She hadn't paused to consider her own feelings. It seemed from the outside like she didn't have any, but he knew they were there, boiling beneath the surface.

“Are you sure you don't want to get some sleep?” He drops his dress shirt onto the floor in the closet near where the hamper should be, next to where Sloan’s feet are as she shifts through Mac’s dresser.

“No, I'm all right.” Sloan throws him a reassuring smile over her shoulder before nudging the drawer shut with her hip. “Did you need?”

“No. I've got clothes in the bed. I left them this morning.” He gestures back toward the main part of the bedroom. “I'll let you. If there's anything you need.”

She smiles at him equal parts understanding and knowing, before she turns back to the closet.

He leaves his t-shirt on, but he steps out of his pants, steps into a well worn pair of pajama bottoms listening to Sloan shuffle around in the closet, changing into whatever she had found to wear.

He’s contemplating the necessity of socks when she appears wearing an over-sized t-shirt and a pair of Mac’s leggings.

The shirt must be something she picked up from a charity event, ‘50th Annual’ proudly proclaimed in neon bubble letters across her chest. She could have borrowed something of Mac's, but she’d gone with this gym bag reject, grinning as he tries to decipher what event she had attended.

“Fun run.” She clarifies for him, raising a bare foot to scratch at her leg. “Outside Berkeley. They only ordered men's sizes.”

He nods and then raises his eyebrows at the equally neon leggings. Leggings Mac normally avoided wearing until right before laundry day, in deference to his dislike of clothing he found difficult to dispense with. Normally they were cropped short, leaving large swaths of Mac's calves bare, but on Sloan they sit lower, her ankles peeking out from under the hem. It's a small difference, but one he can't help but notice as she presses a hand into the mattress beside him and takes a seat, resting her head against his shoulder.

“I can hear you thinking.”

He chuckles at that, the way the line sounds awkward sliding out of her mouth despite her confidence in its delivery.

She wasn't wrong. He was thinking, trying not to think.

“How do you do it?” He asks as she shifts ever so slightly closer.

“Think?” She asks and he smiles again, a quick flash of humor to cover his discomfort.

He thinks he wouldn't mind if she hugged him again, a real hug this time. He would prefer it to be Mac sitting beside him now, holding him, but she was asleep in the next room and it wasn't as if Sloan were unsympathetic. If anything she was more so, less battle worn than Mac, greener than he was.

“Sometimes you have to sit with it.” She says it gently, but not coaxing like Mac. She wasn't asking for an emotional display, wasn't expecting one. “You can't turn it off forever.”

“I know.” He says hating that she's right, knowing that there's nothing else he can do. “But how do you, did you—”

“I go to the gym, work up a sweat, beat the shit out of something. It helps.” He feels her shrug. “Tomorrow I'm going for a walk along the water, stopping by a bookstore, picking up some takeout, turning off my phone, unplugging my router, and sleeping for sixteen hours. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist. It won't exist.”

“That doesn't work.”

She turns her head to look at him, a strand of hair falling to rest across the bridge of her nose. “You don't try to convince yourself it doesn't exist. You try and tell yourself it doesn't matter that it does, that nothing has changed, but you can't convince yourself of that can you?”

He frowns at her, ducking his chin to meet her eye before sighing. She wasn't wrong, not exactly. It wasn't that it didn't matter, but that it shouldn't, that it couldn't. Right now, he needed everything to go back to normal, he needed to feel like everything had gone back to normal. After all, the world would go on, his life would go on. He didn't want to have to sit here swamped with feelings, he shouldn't need to.

“It has to come out sometime.” She reminds him softly. “If you don't make the time-”

He knew she was right. He had spent enough time over the last couple of days, sitting stone-faced— numb by all appearances, while his heart heaved in his chest— to know she was right, that it at least would be better, not to wake up shaking in Mac’s arms, but to force the reckoning the same way she did, the same way Mac would.

He bows his head, let's Sloan lean into him, let's the ache in his chest sit as he tries to breathe.

“I try not to think too much about it, about the specifics you know. It'll haunt you if you let it.” It had been a harrowing lesson, one he had learned in his days with the DA. He doesn't tell her that though, doesn't want her thinking that he should have learned this too. He could pretend of course, had been pretending, but that only went so far. It didn’t go this far.

“I'll sit with you for a while.” Sloan whispers laying a hand on his knee. “It would be nice.”

“Yeah?” He asks, half question, half agreement. The thought of getting up right now felt suddenly exhausting. He wasn't going anywhere and he had no reason to ask her to leave.

He feels her shift, settle in closer as he exhales loudly. Already it was getting easier to let it all go, feel the anguish bubble up in his chest and race through him without pulling a lump up in the back of his throat.

They sit for a while. He listens to her breathe, watches her shadow twist in tiny almost imperceptible increments as her fingers trace out invisible equations in the air before her. She's patient in her silence and he appreciates that as he feels the pressure in his chest ease. “I think dinner’s getting cold.”

She glances over at him then straightens up enough to bump her shoulder against his. “Should we go find out?”

“I suppose.” He returns the flicker of a smile she offers him. “It tastes amazing ice cold, so—” he shrugs and she pulls back, brushing a hand over her head, setting her hair back in place.

“I believe Mac's directive included strict instructions not to make any stops on the way back, so...”

He shrugs again, soaking up the lightness in her voice. Mac's directive had included a few other demands, a couple of choice words, but they both knew she hadn't meant much by any of it.

Sloan follows him out of the bedroom, scooping plates and cutlery out of cabinets as she passes by, carefully ratcheting up the volume of each door she lets slip shut, every drawer she closes as he frees the bags from the oven, pulls the wine from the fridge.

“Will?” For a moment Mac sounds groggy, sleepy, but she quickly finds her footing, the rapid switch from sleep to waking, the all consuming focus hadn't left her.

“Dinner.” He announced ignoring the way her eyes follow him, track his loop around the table as he sets out silverware, glasses.

“You changed.” It isn't accusatory but it's not an idle observation either, there's a thread of tension under the words, an upswell of the livewire energy that had kept them all on the air for three days straight.

“The pants were itchy.” He brushes the comment aside, focusing on laying out the cartons instead: antipasto, fettuccine Alfredo, fried ravioli, the list goes on. He hadn't spared any expense or any consideration for the menu. He wanted real food, rich food. He wanted to feel it sitting in his stomach.

“Oh,” he hears Sloan breathe out appreciatively when she spies the squid, the seafood stew.

Mac when she joins them looks less pleased. She would have preferred her caloric intake in alcohol. She would have preferred another night of tenuous control, an excuse to wallow in the morning. He didn't want to give her that. She needed rest.

He knew it must seem cruel to her, that he would do this intentionally, order everything, even the salad, swamped with meat and cheese, already slathered in dressing. They had other food in the apartment, but this was a rare treat, an indulgence. She wouldn't turn it down. He had known she wouldn’t.

“Is there wine?”

“For dessert.” He promises and she heaves a sigh in resignation, relents without the squabbling he had hoped to avoid.

They eat, quietly at first, then Sloan begins to talk, a quiet verbal version of her internal thought process, rehashing the last several days of economic news, stories they would have to try and squeeze in next week. He mostly ignores her, let's her fill the silence with intermittent hums and sighs as she chews, headlines bubbling up between mouthfuls of pasta and seafood, a litany meant more for Mac's benefit than either of theirs.

Mac joins in as he shoves several empty cartons toward the end of the table. They're eating more slowly now, lazily relishing the food as the meal draws to a close.

“We should have paid attention to—”

“Mac.” His sigh comes out over a note of consternation from Sloan. “No postmortems until Monday.”

“I know. I wasn't. I—” She frowns at him, narrows her eyes but when she doesn't appear to be dissuading him she lets it drop. “You said something earlier about dessert.”

“Cookies.” Sloan offers with relish as he makes his way back to the kitchen.

He's careful to fill the three port glasses with equal portions, carrying them back to the table after he delivers the bottle along with the cookies. Mac makes a show of sipping cautiously at the drink, her eyes locked with his, while Sloan tugs at the string on the pastry box.

“There's more,” he promises her although he knows there's only two glasses left, not enough to satisfy her.

*

He cleans up after dinner, letting Sloan trail an irritated Kenzie into the living room. He can’t see the sun itself setting through the windows, but he watches the sky glow a brilliant orange as he carries the last of the dishes into the kitchen. He stacks them on the counter before loading the dishwasher, careful to finish before he turns to relish in the rare sight, the sky quickly darkening to a deep inky blue. It wasn’t often that he was home in the evenings, as early as they still were this time of year. It was even less often that he was treated to such a spectacular display.

Mac often teased him for what she called his country boy heart, but she always smiled when she said it, if a bit wistfully, before leaving him to take in the sight alone. He would occasionally ask her to stay, but then, like now, she would disappear into another room.

He hears a shout, disgruntled but tinged with mock outrage and he smiles to himself, pushing back against the countertop to straighten, stretch a bit before making his way out of the kitchen.

They’re seated facing each other on the couch. Sloan settled back more comfortably, while Mac looks ready to jump to her feet despite the fact that the tension that had held her earlier had ebbed as she’d lost herself in the argument.

“I don’t know who that is.” Sloan insists despite the fact it’s clear Mac thinks she’s stalling.

“Tick tick.” Mac teases and Will almost laughs at how exasperated Sloan looks.

“Miley Cyrus.”

“No.”

“I know who she is.” Sloan points out a little louder than necessary, before turning to him.

“I am not the arbiter.” He reminds them both as he takes a seat in the arm chair beside the TV. It’s a hopeless assertion given that he knows most of the staff is home, sleeping off the last several days, and they have no one else to call, but he knows better than to get between the two of them when they were intentionally tormenting each other.

“She,” Sloan doesn’t bother indicating Mac, “expects me to know who,” she pauses for a second squinting, “some cucumber man is.”

“Benedict Cumberbatch.” Mac supplies and Sloan shrugs before smirking. “Cucumber Buttercup.”

He has to swallow a laugh as Mac is overtaken with sudden laughter, Sloan shrugging helplessly before winking at him discretely.

“The Hobbit. Sherlock. Atonement.” Mac rattles off when she’s sufficiently recovered, quickly growing exasperated as she realizes Sloan really doesn’t have a clue who she’s talking about. “British actor.”

“Blonde.” Sloan hazards a guess and Mac groans, holding up a hand before disappearing back toward the bedroom.

“Tipping the Velvet.” Sloan mutters as she crosses the room to take a seat on the arm of his chair. “Grad school date night.” She continues, clarifying. “It was quite enlightening.”

*

“Tired?” He asks unnecessarily as Mac burrows closer, head slipping from his shoulder to his chest.

She blinks, presses her foot into the couch armrest irritably and he shifts, pulls her closer so he can wrap his arms around her, hold her tighter.

He smooths her hair from the side of her face, ghosts fingers across her cheek as she bites off a yawn. “Better?”

She's half asleep looking adorably like she might try rubbing her eyes with balled fists at any moment, but she's still trying to follow the film they're watching. Sloan is similarly focused, seated on the floor in front of him, head leaning back against his knee.

It’s the second Cumberbatch film of the night, which is possibly one too many for him, but Sloan hasn’t said a thing since the film started which is a good indication that she’s either given up and fallen back on running through one economic model or another, or, more likely, has found herself absorbed in the film.

He on the other hand is going to get up soon, carefully slipping away from them both. He’ll take his time coming back: folding the blankets back on the bed, fluffing the pillows they kept on the daybed in the corner for Sloan. He would turn the light on in the shower, knowing Mac would be up at some point in the night wanting a fresh start to the weekend. He would leave her clean towels and make sure she had hung her robe back on the door before he retook his seat on the couch, although he knows by then it’s likely that Sloan will have taken his spot, that one or both of them will be asleep and he’ll be able to wander back to the bedroom and into bed without explaining why he hadn’t wanted to sit through another film.

*

He wakes in the darkened room to find the bed beside him empty, cold, the shower running in the other room, a faint bar of light peeking out from under the closed bathroom door. It was late, early, depending on whose standards he was going by, but too early either way to think about getting up so he sighs and throws an arm above his head, trying to get comfortable.

He feels the weight of Sloan’s hand on the end of the bed long before she says anything.

“You up?” She whispers and he knows she’s squinting at him through what little light is filtering in from outside.

“Yeah,” he answers, swallowing, frowning into the inky blackness to where he knows she’s sitting.

He feels her shift, sees her take shape as she crawls closer, pulling at the blankets until she can slip under them.

“You’re freezing.” He reaches for her instinctively, drawing her closer even as she squirms. She won’t tuck herself against him the way Mac does, but she will move closer, lay her forehead against his shoulder, let him slip his arms around her until she’s warmed up. “You should have stolen another blanket.”

“I did.” She yawns, rubs the side of her face against the sleeve of his t-shirt. “I kicked it off when Mac woke up. I couldn’t be bothered to—” she exhales and he pats her on the head, gently, lets her drift back to sleep before he tries to do the same, comforted by the thought of the oncoming morning: breakfast with some light banter, mostly with Sloan before she picked up her stuff around the apartment. He would make a quip about her wanting to throw her phone off the pier and she would promise to call when she got home.

*

He’s disappointed when he wakes to see that Sloan has moved back to the daybed, but he isn’t worried until he realizes Mac has moved away from him, curled into the far corner of the bed.

Back when they had first started working together he had worried a lot about this, the distance. He had worried about how she would deal with the big things, the tragedies, but it wasn’t until she’d come back from overseas that he’d realized how bad it could be when it hit her hard and the tears were the least of his concerns, when it dredged up things she would rather not think about.

Most mornings he would wake her, but he lets her sleep, silently defrosting waffles in the oven as Sloan pads around collecting her things. She wouldn’t leave until she was sure everything was ok, but it’s easier now to think about leaving, easier now to go through the motions, so he keeps quiet and lets her move through the silent apartment ticking off a mental list of her belongings.

Breakfast passes quietly, but not silently even as Mac, clearly distracted, doesn’t add much to the conversation. She’s chattier as they clean up while Sloan polishes off the last of the bacon, but she disappears, as he’s putting the last of the dishes away, to curl up on the couch with a book.

She’s pulled out one of her giant tomes on the Middle East, flipping through it as he watches, Sloan seated beside her doodling in a notebook.

“There were kids.” Mac says when she notices him, Sloan moving to stretch slow and languid before the window. “Maybe you didn’t— we didn’t air it.”

They hadn’t, but CNN had, FOX and MSNBC had, and he had seen the coverage, seen the tiny broken fragile bodies. He had assumed she had refused to air it because she found it manipulative, found it emotionally bankrupt, but now he sees that she hadn’t aired it in part because she would have had to watch it again, see it again and again, be reminded again.

“It’s so much more,” she whispers, reaching past where Sloan had been sitting for the pile of books she had amassed. “It’s always so quiet when you see it on TV. They cut out all the sound, the colors are faded. You don’t—”

She looks at him, looks right at him, and he sees some of her anger. It’s directed at him now but it isn’t for him. He had learned that a long time ago when she had smashed several of his plates into the sink.

“People talk about it like— they have no idea.” She spits out getting to her feet to stalk toward him across the living room.

He nods silently, letting her pace in an effort to release some of the frustration he knows is eating at her. This isn’t something either of them can fix. This is something she has a hard time letting go of, this feeling of ineptitude.

“We did a good job.” He reminds her softly but she waves him off. It wouldn’t make a difference to her now, when what they had done would never be enough. He had never asked, but he thought that had been part of her desire to go overseas, to cover the wars and insurgency. Being closer, perhaps, she thought she could help, change something, but in the end it had made her work seem even more futile, had left her more frustrated, if more numb, to the horrors of war.

“Letting people know what’s happening helps.” He insists gently and she huffs, raking a hand through her hair roughly before agreeing. It was something. It was a start.

“We should have, I should—” she starts and then tries again. “Were you planning on staying in?”

“Today?” He shrugs. “What were you thinking?”

“Goodwill.” She shifts, head tipping contemplatively, “where did you put that list? The one from the IRC fundraiser last month?”

“On the fridge. Next to—”

“It’s not on the fridge.” Sloan calls back from the kitchen and he chuckles.

“Stealing off with your ice cream?” He asks as she appears around the corner.

“Yeah. I thought I’d call a cab. Skip the walk. Have a little food therapy while you two go be helpful.”

“You’re welcome to join us.”

“I have ice cream,” Sloan deadpans, giving Mac a quick hug. “Tell Noora I said hi.”

The name brings a smile to Mac’s face and he wonders, not for the first time, if it had been her or Jim who had first met the bubbly Iraqi woman upon their return to the States. He had asked once but Noora had only winked at him and handed him another box to stack on the shelves in the back room of the charity’s small office.

“Call when you get in.”

“I always do.” Sloan swings her bag of ice cream in his direction as she slips past him down the hall. “I’ll see you Monday.”

“They need cookware and she said one of the women is expecting her first child. I can’t imagine.” Mac presses her lips together as Sloan steps into the elevator. “You don’t have to, but I thought—”

“No, that’s good.” He reaches over to lay a hand on her arm, entice her closer. “I promised I would bring a couple of instruments for the boys the next time we dropped stuff off. We could grab lunch first.”

“Yeah?” She steps closer. “That might be nice.”

“Maybe?” He teases and she smiles, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Mmm.”

“We could bring a doggie bag for Noora. Another strange cuisine: sushi burger, pad cakes, cheeto cookies.”

“Will.” She pulls back a bit to swat at him. “She still hasn’t forgiven you for the chicken in a cone and the birthday cake croissant.”

“That was amazing and she loves me.” He counters. “We should definitely get the cheeto cookies.”

“That’s not a lunch.”

She’s almost laughing now as he smirks. “It’s the lunch of champions and of men with amazing, gorgeous, funny, talented wives, who don’t mind orange fingers and cheeto breath kisses.”

“Will.” She shoves at him as she pulls away, heading back toward the bedroom.

“I’ll dig your tennis shoes out of the coat closet then? The orange ones.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” She calls back, voice light. “I’m not walking around dressed like your lunch. Find the black ones while I find something to wear.”

**Author's Note:**

> The game Sloan and Mac are playing is Walrus. I stumbled upon it while looking for the rules for ‘Up Chicken, Down Chicken’ after watching 5/1 for the hundredth time.


End file.
